I speak with various link builders daily. So a nice brief description or short list of criteria to define a quality link would be great. Really frustrating to visit a site and instantly know it's shite, yet trying to define what makes it shite is often tricky without writing even more than i just wrote here.

So what makes a quality link your eyes?

A very useful and informative post. Thanks.

Yep great post... those indeed would be quality links if they can pass all those requirements

nice list Jason, but I think there are a couple of qualifiers here......

- where quality link criteria conflict (3 and 6 may often conflict for example, unless you would reject a link in a new blog post) then a quality linkbuilder will be pragmatic

- a quality link is great, but a quality link profile will not necessarily be comprised solely of quality links.

the other biggie is that I never found a list which is actually perfect - it always comes down to gut feel and good linkbuilders have a better gut feel than bad linkbuilders. Tick all the boxes you like, but sometimes it is just shite.

Pretty good list Jason, covers most of what I look for, but would add:

recent cache - few days max preferable

age of domain/site. 1-2 yrs min, over 5 a plus.

listing in dirs such as Y/dmoz a plus

Very good list Jason but I would argue against points 2 and 7. In my experience you don't need relevant links to rank and the number of outbound links on the page - although not unended - is not as important as we're told.

Ed

That's true - but doesn't it depend on how you define quality?, links that work, or links that have a bit of class?

Clearly Jason is a classy guy so we'd expect nothing less than high value from him <cue MickG comment>, but if we start to take the definition of quality down to anything that works we could probably include $49 for 1000 directory submissions services and comment spam. Thats going to be a looooong list.

and I thought you knew I was a sarky bitch? 

Great list Jason

Thanks all

These criteria will help train the elves and improve the low quality stuff.

Also helps when talking to the link suppliers who think they offer quality.

For me, the best quality link wouldn't just pass juice, but would be one i believe the search engines aren't working to eliminate, and the kind you'd be happy to show a spam team  But try explaining that to none core members 

Once you send a list like that, I wonder how long it will be before I get link building proposal emails stating thats what they do, all ethical of course etc etc

I just found this post, bit late to the party.

Question for Jason:  are 3 way links ok for you?  Site A links to Site B which links to Site A...type thing.

I've seen sites that do very very well with recips so long as the sites trading links with you are on the same topic as the site they are linking to.

And, I'd add:

The Page on which the potential link is to be has to have:

-- a recent cache in google. 
-- some kind of PR associated with it.
-- has to have some kind of relevance to the topic of the site it is going to link to.
-- links on the page that are related to my topic on my site. ex:  If you have a wedding dress site, than all the links need to be from sites about "wedding stuff" such as wedding jewelry, party bands, hen party sites, etc.

Re "a recent cache in google" ...

Some webmasters take active steps to keep their pages out of the search engine caches so check for that before you reject a link page that isn't cached.

>>   4. I am not interested in a site-wide links.

... unless I am targetting Yahoo for some reason

>>   7. Please don't offer me pages which already have lots of other sites
acquired links. Links must be on pages with 20
outbound links at most.

... unless there are *loads* of (relevant) links. Hublike scoring has been shamefully neglected in recent years, in the race for authority. Why fight on your deep-pocketed opponents turf, when you can dominate the battlefield they refuse to even attend?

>>   9. Links must be in text, no graphics.

... unless you let me control the alt text the same way I could the anchor text

If you can find out, one way or another, getting a feel for how often links to and from a domain change can be a good indicator of "quality". Many site owners are happy to provide info on the average life of a link from their site, and sometimes tell you in they are buying / building links themselves. If a site generally keeps its links up for a long (12+ months) time, and doesn't engage in over the top link buying itself, the value of the links it provides are likely likely to be higher than you might otherwise think.

For instance, old sites ("best viewed in IE 4.0") with few incoming or outgoing links, and few rankings to speak of can still provide good link juice, since they are trusted. Think of it as an "editorial boost", which is separate from the "normal" value of their links